Cyrus Farivar

The New York Times: Like most of her neighbors, Ms. Baranski splurged most on a house in a community studded with some of the most expensive real estate in the country. Early in 2001, when Ms. Baranski seemed richer than she was, they paid $1.95 million for a dilapidated house in Menlo Park, knowing they would tear it down. They spent $1 million over the next few years building their dream house. Ms. Baranski recognizes, of course, that she is…

Or, The Izzard Doctrine shows how history repeats itself. LA Times: The flag-planting ritual and the thinking behind the Russians’ audacious territorial claims have their roots in the development and use of the Doctrine of Discovery by European and American explorers from the 15th through the 20th centuries. Starting with Pope Nicholas V in 1455, the Europeans conveniently declared their divine right to empty land or to land occupied by “pagans and enemies of Christ.” The main requirement was just…

Canoe.ca New Pornographers battle Internet leaks on their own terms July 30 2007 “Personally, I don’t have a huge problem with leaks, I’m of the belief that if people get your record for free but they come to your show and buy a T-shirt or whatever, well, it’s the same difference. You’re not really losing much money. It’s better than them not taking the record for free and not coming to your show,” [New Pornographers singer/guitarist/songwriter Carl] Newman says during…

Many of my favorite acts/bands are playing shows in San Francisco in the coming weeks and months: Eddie Izzard Marines Memorial Theater – August 6 The New Pornographers Warfield – September 17 Arctic Monkeys Bill Graham Civic – September 27 They Might Be Giants Fillmore – September 30 Also of note: Youssou N’Dour at the Masonic – November 30 Ira Glass & David Rakoff at Zellerbach (Berkeley) – February 23

Nick Freilich, aka Epicte, has re-mixed my photo of Meta-Che to advertise his new CD:

Longtime readers of this blog may remember that I did a piece on MobMov, a “guerilla drive-in” last summer for The World. Today, the Chronicle decided to do a piece on it as well. I suppose I should have pitched it to the Chronicle myself. A year ago.

I tried to import five bottles of Belgian beer back, but one of them broke, sadly. But other than that, I made it back in one piece.

I’m about to check out of my Yotel, and have spent the last hour killing time by uploading all the rest of my photos from Estonia and Berlin. And with that, my friends, I leave you this photo that I took of an image painted on the Berlin Wall near Warschauer Strasse — one I’m calling “Meta Che.” See you on the other side!

So I’m spending the night in the new Yotel that’s gotten a lot of buzz in the travel world lately. At least a few years in the making, Yotel is a UK-conceived, Japanese-inspired line of small hotels inside airports. This one in Gatwick is the first, and opened up in early July 2007. Given that I don’t have any friends in the London area, and that it’s a hassle to get into the city, and that London is ridiculously expensive,…

My two weeks in Tallinn have gone by rather quickly. It’s been productive (I had at least one interview every day, sometimes two or three), and I even scored an interview with Mart Laar, the former prime minister of Estonia! It was his economic and political policies in the 1990s that paved the way for its thriving success today. Today, he’s an MP and an active historian — he told me about an awesome little-known story that saved the nascent…